


Onipa'a (Steadfast)

by sara_wolfe



Series: Fifty First Dates [7]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_wolfe/pseuds/sara_wolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Danny is kidnapped, it's a race against the clock to find him before it's too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is another multi-part entry in "Fifty First Dates" but unlike the last, I have no idea how long it's going to last, or even where it's going to go. Should be a fun ride, no?

Danny looked up from the paperwork littering his desk to see Steve hovering over him.

"What's up?" he asked, and when Kono, overhearing him, snorted with laughter, he balled up a piece of paper and threw it at her head. "Get your mind out of the gutter. Both of you," he added, warningly, seeing a smirk on Steve's face. 

"I still want to try dinner and a walk on the beach," Steve told him, perching his hip on the edge of Danny's desk. "Without being shot at, or chased by man-eating tigers-"

"Mittens was hardly a man-eater," Danny reminded him. "But, yeah, I think it's a good idea. Where do you want to go for dinner?"

"How does Italian sound?" Steve asked, and they made plans to meet at a small place just down the street. And as Danny watched Steve walk back to his office, he couldn't keep a smile off his face. It looked like they were finally going to get their nice date, after all. 

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Danny carefully adjusted the knot in his tie, and from behind him, he heard Grace heave an exasperated sigh. Turning around, he met his daughter's impatient gaze as she looked him over. 

"What?" he asked, and Grace rolled her eyes, like she couldn't believe that he didn't already know. 

"That's what you're wearing on your date with Uncle Steve?" she asked, and Danny automatically looked down at himself. Nice shirt, sharply-pressed slacks, good tie – 

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" he demanded, unable to see what had his daughter so mortally offended. 

"Ties are for work, Danno," Grace informed him, matter-of-factly. "You don't wear a tie on a date."

"There's nothing wrong with wearing a tie on a date," Danny said, defensively, but Grace looked positively horrified. 

"You don't wear the same clothes on a date that Uncle Steve saw you wearing at work," she insisted. 

"So, lose the tie?" Danny asked, getting an emphatic nod in return. 

"Lose the tie," Grace echoed. "And wear that dark gray shirt," she added, nodding at his closet. "That one's new, right?"

"Yeah, it's new," Danny confirmed. 

Stepping inside his closet, he shed the blue shirt he currently had on and traded it for the gray one that Grace had indicated. She nodded her approval as he stepped out of the closet.

"Much better," she told him, happily. "Danno," she added, a note of hesitation in her voice, "you can drop me off at Leilani's house, before you go on your date."

Danny grinned at Grace, reaching out and pulling her into a hug. "If you think that I am giving up even a second with you," he told her, "especially a night we hadn't planned on-"

"You don't mind me coming to dinner with you and Uncle Steve?" Grace pressed, quietly. 

"Steve insisted I bring you," Danny reassured her, "as soon as I told him that you were spending the weekend with me. I think he's got a special surprise lined up for you," he confided in Grace, who broke into a smile. "You ready to go?" he asked, and Grace nodded, eagerly. 

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

They were driving toward the restaurant when the car in front of them suddenly started fishtailing. Danny hit the brakes and yanked the wheel to the side to swerve out of the way of the car, pinning Grace to the seat with his arm to keep her from moving. The Camaro bumped onto the side of the road before coming to a stop, and Danny breathed a sigh of relief when he looked over and saw that Grace was shaken, but okay. 

"You all right, Monkey?" he asked, getting a quick nod in return. 

"Danno, the other car," Grace said, urgently, and Danny looked out the windshield to see that the other car had slammed into a telephone pole, the front of the hood completely crumpled in at the point of impact. 

"Stay here," Danny ordered, as he pulled his cell phone out and got out of the car. "Stay inside the car."

Grace nodded, murmuring a quiet assent as she hunkered down on the floor between the seat and the dashboard, her eyes barely peeking above the passenger window. Danny jogged across the street to the other car, pulling the driver's side door open and feeling for a pulse at the neck of the unconscious driver. He dialed nine-one-one, listening to the phone ring before an operator picked up. 

"This is Detective Danny Williams," he said, without preamble. "I'm on Maunakea Street, and at the site of a one-car accident. Going to need an ambulance out here; one victim, the driver-"

He broke off at the sound of a groan from the man in the driver's seat, tucking the phone between his ear and his shoulder to better support the man as he shifted in his seat. 

"Hey, buddy, take it easy," he said, soothingly. "You crashed your car, but you're going to be okay."

"Detective Williams" the man mumbled, his head lolling to the side as he tried to focus on Danny. 

"Do I know you?" Danny asked, and the man opened his eyes, a strange smile coming over his face. 

"No," he said, slowly, "but I know you."

Then, his eyes flickered to something over Danny's shoulder, and Danny instinctively turned to look. He caught a flash of something coming at his face, and he belatedly lifted an arm in automatic defense, but he didn't move fast enough. A heavy weight crashed into the side of his head, and the world went dark…


	2. Chapter 2

When the car in front of them started to swerve, Grace let out a yelp. Her father's arm shot out, pinning her back to her seat as he yanked the wheel, jerking their car off the road to keep from hitting the car in front of them. Their car bumped to a stop in the patch of grass alongside the road, and Grace let out a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding. 

"You all right, Monkey?" Danno asked, and Grace nodded, distractedly. Her attention was caught by the car that had been ahead of them, now wrapped around a telephone pole. 

"Danno, the other car," she said, and she watched a look of concern flash across her father's face. 

"Stay here," Danno told her, as he got out of the car, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. "Stay in the car."

Grace nodded, obediently hunkering down on the floor between the seat and the dashboard. She watched her father make his way across the street and over to the other car, pulling the door open. He had his phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder as he checked on the man driving the other car, and his mouth was moving like he was talking to someone. Grace hoped it was nine-one-one, or Uncle Steve. 

Hearing the crunch of gravel from behind her, Grace peeked through the rear window of the car to see another car pulling to a stop behind them. A tall man with dark hair got out of the passenger side of the car, jogging across the street to where Danno was. Danno turned to look at the man standing behind him. 

Then, Grace watched in horror as the man lifted his hand, holding a slim crowbar, and then he hit Danno over the head. 

Grace's eyes went wide, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as she watched her father crumple to the pavement. There was blood slowly leaking from his head, where the man had hit him, onto the pavement, pooling beneath his face. Grace wanted to scream in horror, but she couldn't seem to make her voice work. She couldn't seem to make anything work, completely frozen where she was crouched in the car. 

She watched as the man scooped Danno up off the ground, slinging her father over his shoulder like he was a bag of rice. The man who was in the crashed car got out, grabbing the crowbar that the second man had dropped on the ground after he'd hit Danno, as well as scooping up Danno's phone and putting it in his pocket. Then, they headed back to the car parked behind the one Grace was hiding in. 

They disappeared out of her line of sight, and Grace shuddered at the thought of losing sight of her father. Before she knew what she was doing, she was crawling carefully into the backseat, peeking above the back dash to keep an eye on the men. She could faintly see them moving around at the back of their car, and it looked like one of them had opened the trunk. Then, there was the sound of slamming metal, and she knew that they'd just stuffed Danno into the trunk of the car. 

Then, she heard something that made her suddenly go very, very cold. 

"I'll get rid of his car," one of the men was saying, as he walked around the back of their car and headed up toward the Camaro. 

Grace's heart raced in sheer terror. Her mind went completely blank as she listened to the man's slow footsteps on the pavement, watched his slow approach to her hiding place. Then, she thought she heard Uncle Steve's voice in her head. 

_"Remember, Monkey," Steve was saying, "more important than getting away from someone trying to catch you, is to not let them catch you in the first place."_

_"What Uncle Steve is trying to say," Danno said, with a sigh, "is that you run. When you think you're in some kind of danger, you run as fast and as far as you can."_

_"And if they do catch me?" Grace asked, quietly, remembering how afraid she'd been when Danno's old partner had locked her in the storage shed._

_"Then you bite, you kick, you scream," Steve told her, solemnly. "You do whatever you have to to get them to let go, until Danno and I can get there."_

_Grace nodded, wordlessly. "And then the bad guys better watch out, right?" she ventured, with a small smile._

_"Right," Steve confirmed, reaching out and ruffling her hair. "Now, lesson one in kicking some ass…"_

Run. Uncle Steve's voice kept echoing in her head, and Grace reached out and carefully opened the back door. She half-climbed half-fell out of the car, landing hard on the pavement and scraping her elbow when she hit the ground. She bit back a whimper of pain as she crawled along the ground, staying low to keep out of sight. 

In order to move the Camaro, the man would have to come around to the driver's side, which meant that she needed to get where he couldn't see her. Because if he or his partner did see her – Grace didn't know exactly what could happen, but she could certainly imagine, and she knew that it was going to be bad. She scurried along the side of the road to drop into a ditch, pressing against the rock-studded dirt as her chest heaved with exertion and fear. 

She risked a quick peek over the edge of the ditch to see the man getting into Danno's car and starting the engine with the keys that were still in the ignition. The man drove away, and then his partner got into the car that he'd crashed, backing it up and pulling away from the telephone pole. 

Once the men were gone, Grace clambered out of the ditch and ran back to their car. She headed back to the trunk, but when she tried the door, it didn't budge. The trunk was locked, and she couldn't see a key when she opened the driver's side door to look inside the car. Slamming the door shut in frustration, Grace ran back to the trunk, crouching down by the keyhole. 

"Danno?" she whispered, waiting anxiously for the sound of her father's voice. "Daddy? Can you hear me?"

But, there was no answer, and Grace felt tears welling up in her eyes at the thought of her father lying dead inside the trunk. 

"Danno, please," she pleaded. 

She wished, desperately, that the men had left Danno's phone lying on the ground. A second later, she remembered her own cell phone, but when she pulled it out of her pocket, the screen was cracked clear through the middle, and it wouldn't turn on when she pressed the button. She'd probably broken it falling out of the car. 

"No, no, no-" Grace moaned, feeling panic beginning to set in. 

Then, she heard the sound of footsteps in the distance, gravel sliding roughly across the road, and she was running back to the ditch and jumping down inside before she even knew what she was doing. She landed wrong, her ankle twisting underneath her, and she bit down hard on her tongue to keep from crying out. 

The first man was back, the one who'd driven off in their car, and he walked back to the trunk, thumping on the metal with a heavy fist. 

"Still living in there?" he asked, laughing cruelly when his action produced a soft groan. Grace barely heard it, but it was enough to tell her that Danno was still alive. Badly hurt, but alive. 

She watched as the man climbed into the driver's seat, drumming his hands on his knees as he waited for his partner. Several minutes passed with agonizing slowness, and then a cell phone rang with a shrill sound that made Grace jump. She watched as the man checked the ringing phone, and then he slammed the phone down on the dashboard without answering it, rolling down the window and throwing the phone into the ditch. 

Grace hunched over as she crawled to where the phone had landed, blinking back tears when she picked up Danno's now-broken phone. Two cell phones, and she still had no way to call for help. She crawled back to her vantage point to spy on the man, again, to see him talking on his own cell phone. 

"-yeah, I dumped the car a few blocks away," he was saying. "Stripped the stereo out, made it look like a jacking." The man was silent for a moment, listening to whoever was on the other side, and then he scowled. "Yes, I wiped down the car. What do you take me for, an idiot? Look, where the hell are you? I'll come pick you up, and then we can start on the cop."

 _'Repeat what he says,'_ Grace chanted to herself, as she and the man both waited for an answer. _'Please, please repeat what he says to you.'_

But, clearly the men who'd hurt Danno were smarter than the villains in the movies, because the man just grunted after he heard his partner's reply, clicking off his phone and throwing it onto the seat beside him. Then, he started the car, gunned the engine, and roared off down the street. 

_'I need to get help,_ ' Grace thought, as she scrambled out of the ditch and stared after the departing car. _'I need Uncle Steve.'_

She thought for a second about waiting and flagging down a passing car, but none had come along the road since the accident, and Grace had a sinking suspicion she wasn't going to see anything. Besides, she – and Danno – couldn't afford to wait. The restaurant was just a few streets over, she thought. And she knew Uncle Steve was going to be there.

 _'Hang on, Danno,'_ she thought, determinedly, as she began to run. _'Me and Uncle Steve are going to find you.'_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I've got a bit of a confession. I have no freaking clue where this is going. Thanks for sticking with me, anyway.

Steve glanced at his watch for the third time in ten minutes, and then over at the front door to the restaurant. He bit back a sigh when Danny and Grace refused to just magically appear out of thin air. 

_'Come on, Danny,'_ he thought, as he resisted the urge to check his watch for a fourth time. 

For a brief nanosecond, he wondered if he'd been stood up, but he dismissed the idea just as quickly as it had occurred to him. There was no way that Danny was standing him up. Absolutely no way. 

He lasted another ten minutes before he pulled his cell phone out, hitting one on his speed dial for Danny's number, and listening to the phone ring. Four rings, and it switched over to voicemail, and his dug his nails into his palm in frustration. 

_"This is Danny, leave a message."_ The curt message, so at odds with his partner's usual verbosity, usually never failed to make Steve smile. But now, with a faint thread of worry gnawing at his gut, he couldn't even work up a tiny smirk. 

"Hey, Danny," he said, trying to keep the worry out of his voice, "just wondering if you'd checked your watch, lately. That's all. I'm waiting for you and Grace-" and there was nothing to add after that that didn't just make him sound pathetic – "I'll see you when you get here, okay?"

Hanging up the phone, he glanced back down at his watch. Twelve minutes. He waved off the waiter who was hovering near his table again, ignoring the man's impatient eye roll, and went back to staring determinedly at the door. 

_'Come on, Danny.'_

Another ten minutes, and he was about to call Danny again – and considering calling out the cavalry – when he heard an enraged shriek coming from the front of the restaurant. He stood up, moving through the other diners crowded in front of him, pushing through the crowd faster when he thought he heard his name.

"Uncle Steve!" 

"Grace?" Steve muttered, elbowing a couple of rubberneckers aside just in time to see the front-door host swing Grace up into his arms as she tried to break past him, clamping a hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming, again. 

Then, he watched as Grace promptly sunk her teeth into the hand held over her mouth. Even as the man howled in pain, jerking his hand away, Grace had driven her foot straight back into his crotch. The man dropped her, and Grace fell heavily to the floor, scrambling up to her feet and sprinting across the distance that separated them, to throw herself into his arms. Steve had a moment to take in the fact that she was limping, even though she hadn't laded that hard, before he was sweeping Grace up into his arms. 

"Grace, what-" he started, but the little girl cut him off before he could say anything else. 

"We were driving – and there was another car – he hit the telephone pole, but he wasn't really hurt – and they had a crowbar, and they've got him –"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Steve interrupted the frantic tirade pouring out of Grace's mouth, absently noting that she had definitely inherited her father's gift of gab. "Slow down, Gracie. Take a breath. What happened? Where's Danny?"

Grace took a deep breath, her chest heaving with the effort. She took another, clearly trying to calm herself down, locking her eyes with Steve's. 

"They've got him, Uncle Steve," she said, somberly, her next words chilling him to the bone. "The bad men have my Danno."

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

Danny regained consciousness, slowly. And when he managed to peel his eyes open, he almost wished that he hadn't. 

It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn't see some of where he was. And what he could see wasn't reassuring. As far as he could tell, he was being held in some kind of warehouse, surrounded by dirt, grime, and shipping pallets stacked almost to the ceiling. He craned his head around to take in as much of his surroundings as he could, gritting his teeth against the shooting pain in his shoulders that the movement produced. 

The pain helped, slightly, because with it came the realization that he was actually having trouble feeling his arms. He shifted trying to regain sensation in his arms, only for the shooting pain to turn into a low burn of agony.

 _'Hanging by my wrists,'_ he realized, glancing up toward the ceiling to confirm his suspicions. 

And, yep, he was suspended from the ceiling by a thick chain, heavy manacles wrapped around his wrists. Letting his head fall forward, he stared at the ground, where his toes barely brushed the filthy concrete, meaning that his shoulders were bearing all of his weight. No wonder he'd lost feeling in his arms while he'd been unconscious. 

He couldn't figure out why it had taken him so long to come to that realization, but his head felt fuzzy and he thought that it might have something to do with that. He couldn't remember what had happened to make him so fuzzy, how he'd wound up in a filthy, and clearly abandoned, warehouse out in God-only-knew-where.

 _'Were we on a case?'_ he thought, as he looked around the warehouse, trying to get a clue as to his bearings. He moved carefully to avoid agitating his shoulders even more than they already were. 

He remembered being at work, remembered talking to Steve about dinner plans, but there was nothing after that. Just one, big, terrifying blank. He assumed that they'd been called out on a case – 

_'No,'_ Danny thought, stopping that train of thought before it could even get started. _'I can't afford to assume anything. Not without proof.'_

But there was no proof of anything. Which meant that he was back at blank nothingness, again. And that was almost more terrifying than knowing for sure what had happened. 

_'What if we weren't on a case?'_ he couldn't help thinking. _'What if I was alone when I was attacked, what if no one knows I'm out here? What if they don't even know I'm missing?'_

That made him go cold, the thought that no one was looking for him. He didn't know how long he'd been tied up in that warehouse, but if it had only been a short while, it was entirely possible that no one knew he was gone. And if they didn't know that he was missing, he could be dead before anyone even thought to look for him. 

The sound of a door slamming open dragged him out of his thoughts before he could spiral down into panic. He looked in the direction of the sound, squinting through the faint streaks of sunlight coming from the open door, to see a figure picking his way carefully across the debris littering the floor. 

"This place is utterly disgusting, don't you think?" The figure turned out to be a man wearing a very expensive suit that probably cost more than Danny made in a year. "Honestly, I've never understood the appeal of these places, but they have their uses, I suppose."

"Like holding a cop prisoner?" Danny croaked out, and a cold smile spread across the man's face.

"Exactly," he agreed, a false cheerfulness in his voice. "Detective Williams, I'm so glad you decided to rejoin us in the land of the living."

"Who are you?" Danny demanded, watching a small frown crease the man's handsome face. 

"You don't remember me?" he said, one hand drifting up to clutch dramatically at his heart. A silver ring with a blood-red ruby glinted on his ring finger. "Detective, I'm hurt." Raising his voice, he called out, "He doesn't remember me!"

At the sound of the man's voice, a pair of hulking figures detached themselves from the shadows to stand beside the man. They both looked vaguely familiar, and Danny wracked his brain, trying to place one or both of them. 

"How hard did you hit him, anyway?" the first man demanded, oblivious to Danny's silent turmoil. "I told you to knock him out, not splatter his brains all over the pavement."

"I just gave him a little love tap," one of the Hulks said, jerking his shoulder in a shrug. "Only took one to knock him out; he went down like a sack of bricks."

He swung his fist through the air, miming hitting Danny in the head with an overly-exaggerated gesture. His partner laughed, a cold, cruel sound, and the sound knocked something loose in Danny's mind. Dinner plans, driving to the restaurant, the car accident – Grace!

"Where the hell is my daughter?" he demanded, hoarsely, getting a surprised look from the first man. "What did you do with my daughter, you son of a bitch?"

"What daughter?" the man asked, obviously perplexed. Turning on the hulks, he snapped, "You told me he was alone."

"He was!" Hulk number two blustered, his eyes flicking quickly between Danny and the man. "There was no one else around, I swear."

"Well, clearly there was," the man bit off, his eyes flashing with a barely-restrained fury. "And clearly you need to find her, before she goes to the authorities."

"No!" Danny yelled, as his mind went temporarily blank with terror. They hadn't known about Grace, and he'd just put her life in danger with his own carelessness… "NO!"

"Oh, don't worry, Detective," the first man said, in a patronizing tone. "We're going to take good care of your little girl. I promise." 

He patted Danny on the cheek, jerking his hand back, hastily, when Danny whipped his head around to try and sink his teeth into the man's fingers. Then, he strode out of the warehouse with the Hulks trailing behind him. The sound of his cold, high laughter bounced off the metal walls. 

"Don't you touch her!" Danny screamed at the man's departing back. "Don't you fucking touch her! I'll kill you!"

His only answer was the sound of the heavy metal door slamming shut, leaving him trapped alone in the darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit of a short chapter, this time around, but I'll make it up to you, next time.

Steve drove in a terse silence to the scene of Danny's kidnapping. In the seat beside him, Grace was equally silent, an unusually somber look on her face as she stared out of the windshield. Steve was tempted to suggest getting her somewhere safe, again, but the last time he'd mentioned it, Grace had fixed him with one of her father's steely-eyed glares as she crossed her arms. 

"I'm not going anywhere, Uncle Steve," she'd informed him, curtly. "I'm the only one who knows what those men look like, and every second that we spend arguing is another second that Danno is with the bad guys."

She'd sounded eerily like her father in that moment, and Steve pitied Danny when Grace got older. As much as he hadn't liked it, though, Grace had been right. There was no time to get her to safety, and she knew what Danny's kidnappers looked like. So, she was sitting stiffly in the front seat of his truck, wearing his spare Kevlar vest, and clutching his Taser like a particularly macabre teddy bear. 

He'd taken a few, precious seconds to show her how to use the non-lethal device, reasoning in all good conscience that he couldn't hand a loaded weapon to a ten-year-old, but he didn't want to leave her undefended. So, Taser. If he was lucky, Danny wouldn't yell too loudly when he found out.

 _'Actually, if I'm lucky,'_ Steve thought, clutching the steering wheel tighter as he picked up the speed, _'if I'm really, really lucky, Danny will still be alive to yell at me about this.'_

He pulled to a stop at the scene of the "accident", surveying the road with a critical eye. There were skid marks on the road that ended abruptly in the grass in front of the telephone pole. It looked like the driver had braked hard before hitting the telephone pole, and Steve guessed that he'd been trying to minimize the damage done, while making things look worse than they really were.

Getting out of the truck, Steve walked over to the telephone pole, pulling on a pair of gloves as he walked. Grace jogged up to his side, the Kevlar vest hanging overly-large on her small frame.

"This is where they crashed their first car," she told him, quietly. "Danno stopped to help, and the driver hit him over the head with a crowbar."

"Where?" Steve asked, and Grace frowned down at the ground, moving slowly across the asphalt until she stopped at a spot. 

"Here," she told Steve. "I think that's Daddy's blood," she added, in a small voice. 

"It's going to be okay," Steve reassured her, as he crossed to her side. "I promise."

Grace nodded, but the look in her eyes told him that she wasn't convinced. She didn't say anything, but Steve knew that she was smart enough to know that some promises just couldn't be kept. She didn't call him on it, though, and for that he was grateful. 

Crouching down, Steve took a closer look at the bloodstain on the pavement. There wasn't a lot of blood, thankfully, which meant that, whoever had taken Danny, they'd been trying to incapacitate him, not kill him. Now, he just had to find out who "they" were.

"Grace," Steve asked, as he stood up, "do you remember what either of those cars looked like? The one they crashed, and the one they took Danny away in?"

"I think so," Grace said, her voice steady with only the slightest quaver. "And, I think I remember what the men looked like, too."

"Good job, Monkey," he told her, and a small smile flitted across her face when he used Danny's nickname for her. "All right, I'm going to get you on the phone with Chin and Kono, and you can tell them everything you know, okay? The sooner we find these guys, the better."

"Yeah," Grace agreed, nodding. "Okay, Uncle Steve."

Setting Grace up in the truck with his cell phone, Steve prowled around the crime scene. He collected evidence from everything he found, no matter how minor. He wasn't going to take the chance that missing even a scrap kept them from finding Danny. 

Fifteen minutes later, Grace waved him over, passing him the phone and curling up against the seat. Steve squeezed her hand, reassuringly, as he took the phone. 

"Chin, did you get what you need?" he asked, without preamble. 

"And more," Chin replied. "Grace has a good eye, and an even better memory. I've got license plates on both vehicles – naturally, both were reported stolen recently."

"Clearly, we're not dealing with amateurs," Steve commented. "Anything else?"

"Preliminary descriptions of both men." Kono came on the line, probably speaking over Chin's shoulder. "I'm running them through the database, but so far we haven't had any hits."

"Keep me informed on anything you find," Steve said.

"Will do, Boss," Kono agreed. "Do you want us to come out there?"

"Not yet," Steve replied. "I think we'll get more done with you and Chin working things back at headquarters."

Hanging up the phone, he turned to see Grace watching him, an exhausted look on her young face. She had her hands wrapped protectively around her ankle, and Steve remembered her limping on that leg earlier when she'd come to find him at the restaurant. 

"What happened to your leg, Gracie?" he asked, softly, and she looked down at the limb in surprise, as though she'd forgotten that it was injured. 

"I stumbled when I jumped down into the ditch," she finally answered, nodding at the deep trench on the side of the road. "It kind of hurts."

"Let me take a look," Steve said, and Grace obliged, stretching her leg out on the seat in front of her. 

Steve untied her sneaker and eased the shoe off her foot. Her ankle was slightly swollen, but pressure from her shoe had kept the inflammation down to a manageable level. Digging under the seat, Steve produced his first aid kit and wrapped Grace's ankle with the stretchy, fabric bandage. Grace watched him with an interested look on her face, poking carefully at the bandage when he was done. 

"It doesn't hurt as much as it did," she said, as she put her shoe back on and did up the laces. "Thanks, Uncle Steve."

"Anytime, Monkey," Steve said, ruffling Grace's hair. "Come on. Let's go find your dad."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this chapter took an interesting (and rather dark) tone. Even I wasn't expecting things to go here. There is some dark imagery here, but I tried to keep it vague, due to the rating.

Danny floated in the darkness. His arms and back burned with a slow agony; he was pretty certain that he'd dislocated his right shoulder testing the limits of his bindings. The most he'd been able to do was send himself swaying on the end of the chain suspending him from the ceiling, his toes dragging along the concrete. And it was literally his toes; his captors had taken his boots, probably to keep him from getting too far away if, by some chance, he'd been able to get out of his bindings. 

He still didn't know how long he'd been tied up. In the darkness, without a way to see his watch, he had no way to determine how much time had passed. He was estimating at least an hour, but that didn't take into account how long he'd been unconscious the first time, and he'd given up counting the seconds after about fifteen minutes. 

He couldn't stop thinking about Grace. If she was safe, if the Hulk twins had found her – the thought of his daughter being in danger made his stomach churn, wildly. 

_'She's fine,'_ Danny told himself, firmly, refusing to even entertain any other possibility. _'She has to be. She **has** to be.'_

His musing was interrupted by the sound of the warehouse door scraping open across the concrete. Danny automatically tensed up at the sound, narrowing his eyes as he stared at the approaching figure. It turned out to be his main captor, rather than one of the Hulks.

"I'm so glad to see that you're back with us, Detective," the man said, in a syrupy voice. "Did you have a nice nap?"

"Go to hell," Danny snapped, and the man shook his head, tsking sadly. 

"After all the time we spent together," he said, mournfully, "this is all you have to say to me?"

"All the time we spent together?" Danny echoed, incredulously. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm going to have to kill Higgins," the man mused, rather than answering him, "if he managed to hit you hard enough to actually induce amnesia."

"Higgins?" Danny repeated, and the man smirked at him. 

"Not his real name, of course," he replied. "Honestly, Detective, how stupid do you think I am? No, wait, I don't think I want to hear your answer to that one." Stepping back, he studied Danny with a hurt expression on his face. "You honestly don't know who I am?"

"Not a clue," Danny barked. Actually, the more the man talked, the more his voice sounded familiar, but Danny wasn't about to tell him that. 

The man sighed, theatrically. "Well, then," he remarked, perhaps this will jog your memory."

Then, to Danny's amazement and horror, the man grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him forward, and kissed him, deeply. Danny tried to throw himself backward, moving as much as he could in his restraints, but the man's grip was too strong, and he couldn't escape his iron grip. Then, the man moved his mouth on Danny's, and a puckered scar on the side of his mouth brushed against Danny's skin, and he completely froze. 

In an instant, he wasn't hanging from a chain in an abandoned warehouse in Honolulu. He was back in New Jersey, on his first week of the job, replying to a domestic abuse call. He and his partner had just arrested the husband, and his partner had cuffed the man and was escorting him down to their squad car. Danny had just finished taking the wife's statement, and was headed back down the hallway, when he heard a crashing sound coming from behind an apartment door... 

_"Hello?" Danny called, undoing the snap on his gun holster as he rapped briskly on the door. "Is someone in trouble in there?"_

_There was another, fainter crashing sound, followed by something that might have been a voice calling out. He couldn't be sure._

_"This is the police," he called out, again. "If you can hear me, I'm coming in there."_

_If his partner had been there, his fellow rookie, as impulsive as Danny was cautious, would have kicked in the door in true action-hero style. Danny instead tried the doorknob, the door opening easily under his hand. In later years, Danny would come to see this as the moment when he first screwed up._

_He slowly entered the apartment, his hand hovering over his weapon. He hadn't yet pulled the gun out (second mistake), not wanting to pull a weapon on someone who'd simply slipped and fallen on the kitchen floor. The apartment had looked fine, no furniture overturned, no obvious signs that some kind of a struggle had taken place._

_"Police, is someone there?" Danny called out, again, moving cautiously through the apartment._

_He heard a weak groan, and then a voice whimpered, "Back here."_

_Following the sound of the voice, Danny entered a bedroom at the back of the apartment. He couldn't see anyone in the room, and so he stepped inside the bedroom. His back was to the walk-in closet as he entered (third mistake), and he didn't see the figure that jumped out at him._

_His first clue that he wasn't alone was the slim arm that wrapped around his throat, cutting off his air. He clawed desperately at the arm around his throat, his gun falling from his limp fingers to land on the thick carpet with a muffled thump. Then, he felt a tiny pinprick on the side of his neck, and the world disappeared into darkness._

_It took his partner, and the rest of the department, two days to find him. Two days, in which Danny sunk into a living hell that he didn't think he would ever escape from. He was never fully conscious during his captivity; his captor kept him sufficiently drugged that he was never able to form a coherent picture of the man._

_He didn't really remember what happened to him during his two days of captivity. He knew that he'd been hurt, badly enough that his partner had gotten violently sick when he first entered the room, badly enough that he'd died twice in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and had to be revived. He'd been told, later, that he'd been in surgery for almost six hours to save his life, and he'd spent almost two months on desk duty until he'd recovered._

_But, he still had no concrete memories of that time. He supposed that was something to be grateful for._

_What he did remember was pain. Utterly blinding pain, as his captor sliced his body to ribbons. Hands where they'd had no business being. A dark, cruel laugh that sent shivers down his skin. And that scarred mouth, on him, kissing him…_

Danny jerked himself out of the painful memories with a hoarse cry. His captor was standing in front of him, a small smile on his face. 

"Back with me, now, Detective?" the man crooned, in a sing-song voice. "Detective. You've come such a long way since I've known you last, haven't you, Danny Boy?"

"Stop," Danny whispered, his voice emerging in barely more than a croak. "Stop it."

"You were so young, so naive," the man went on, as if Danny hadn't even spoken. "So beautiful. Time has only made you even more so, you know."

"Don't touch me," Danny snapped, jerking his head back when the man reached out to caress his cheek. 

"Don't be like that," the man scolded him, lightly. "You can't tell me that you haven't missed me, that you haven't spent every night since our last, dreaming of me."

"No," Danny rasped out, painfully, and it wasn't completely a lie. 

The dreams didn't come every night, not any more. But when they came, he woke himself up with the screams. He'd just been lucky, so far, that he hadn't had any nightmares on Grace's nights, or during the time he spent bunking on Steve's couch. 

"Don't lie to me," the man said, tapping him gently on the cheek. "I can see the truth in your eyes. They're the windows to the soul, you know, and yours are wide open. I can see everything in your eyes."

_"You have such beautiful eyes," the man whispered to him, running a hand down his chest. Danny weakly struggled to get away, the ropes tying him to the bed tightening around his wrists. "Such beautiful eyes."_

Danny shuddered out of the memory only to be thrust into a waking nightmare. His captor had his hand fisted in Danny's short hair, pulling his head back at a painful angle, mouth covering his in a hard kiss. He couldn't move away, could only sit there and endure until the man was done. When the man finally pulled away, Danny spit at him, the glob coming out red, and he realized that he must have bitten his tongue. 

The man was unbothered by his actions, simply wiping the spit off his cheek with an elegantly manicured finger. 

"We're going to have so much fun, you and I," the man told him, smiling as he rolled up the sleeves of his elegant shirt. "So much fun."

Danny had never been more terrified in his life.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy monkeys, an actual update!
> 
> Seriously, thank you guys so much for sticking with me for this long. I never meant to go so long with this fic, but then I never intended this one to go the way it did, and it went to a pretty dark place in the last chapter. I needed to take a bit of a break, and then life and everything else completely caught up with me.
> 
> Again, thank you so much for your patience. I promise, it will be rewarded, and Danny will get out of this. Eventually.

Steve scowled at the glass littering the street around Danny's Camaro. His kidnappers had been good, smashing the windows and yanking the stereo out of the dashboard, making it look like the car had been stripped and abandoned after a joyride. 

Unfortunately for them, Steve was better. 

There were no fingerprints; the men had been smart enough to wipe down everything they'd touched. What they hadn't been smart enough to do, though, was remember to take the cloth they'd used to wipe down the car. 

"Uncle Steve!" Grace hollered, from where she was sitting in the truck, and he jogged over to her. 

She was cradling the portable fingerprint scanner in her lap, her eyes glued to his laptop screen. Steve hadn't been holding out much hope for anything useful from the cloth he'd found in Danny's car, the fingerprint he'd found had only been a partial, but he'd run it, nonetheless. And they'd hit on a match. 

"Good job, Monkey," he told Grace, who gave him a small smile. Dialing his phone, he drummed his fingers impatiently while he waited for Chin to pick up. "Chin, I need you to run a name for me. Ben Kahale."

"Thug for hire." Chin came back after about ten minutes, his voice grim. "Kahale is a mercenary who works for the highest bidder."

"Any chance he's been to New Jersey?" Steve asked, his hopes dashed at Chin's next words.

"He's never left the island, and I can't find any evidence of him being involved with any cases that Danny's worked on" Chin told him. "This isn't some kind of vendetta for him. If he snatched Danny, it's because someone paid him to do it."

"I don't suppose you can figure out who paid him?" Steve asked. "Or, who he might have been working with? Grace said there were two men."

"Working on it," Chin replied. "You will be happy to know that Kahale matches one of the descriptions that Grace gave us. And if we can find the other one-"

"Keep me informed," Steve said. 

Hanging up, he glanced over at Grace. The girl was staring anxiously out the window at the wreck of her father's car, her hands clenched into fists. 

"I'm scared," she whispered, glancing over at him. "What if we can't get Danno back?"

"We will," Steve said, firmly, squashing down the same fear that kept nagging at him. They had to find Danny. There was no other option. "We are going to find Danno, Grace. I promise."

Then, he dialed Danny's old precinct in New Jersey. It was still entirely possible that this whole thing was a local affair, but Danny had made a lot of enemies in his old life, and Steve wasn't willing to count anything out.

* * *

The next time Danny regained consciousness, he was lying on a bed. Looking to either side revealed that he was still in the warehouse, which meant his captor had to have brought the bed in. His arms were stretched over his head, secured to the bed frame, and his ankles were tied to either side of the bed, spreading his legs apart. He was still dressed, but he knew his captor preferred having his "fun" when he was conscious and able to react. 

Danny pulled at the bindings on his wrists, testing. Instead of the chains that had held him before, he was tied up with some kind of rope. And, unlike last time he'd found himself in this kind of situation, he was completely clear-headed. So, either his captor was overconfident and underestimating him, or he had other plans. 

It was the thought of those "other plans" that made a cold shiver run down his back. 

And speak of the devil… Danny turned his head at the sound of the heavy door being dragged open, squinting in the bright sunlight that flooded the empty space. And the creator of his personal hell strode into the warehouse. 

Antony Chambers. Danny didn't remember the first time he met the man who'd become so utterly obsessed with him. He might have bumped into him on the street, or stood in front of him in line at the grocery store. It might have even been something as simple as Chambers seeing him across the room. But whatever it was, it had clearly been more than enough for Chambers. 

Chambers was supposed to still be in prison, though. Danny had still been hospitalized at the time of his trial, but he'd found out later that Chambers had been sentenced to seventy-five years, with no possibility of parole. Obviously, something had changed. 

"So glad you're back with me, Danny Boy," Chambers crooned, in a thoroughly unsettling tone. He sat down on the edge of the bed beside Danny, a creepy smile gracing his features. "How are you feeling?"

"Untie me, and I'll be more than happy to give you an answer," Danny said, struggling to keep his voice even. 

"I don't think that's necessary," Chambers said, still leering down at him. 

"How are you out of prison?" Danny asked, getting a smirk from his captor.

"Good behavior," Chambers told him. "Well, that, and overcrowding in the prisons. The judge figured that since you were no longer in the state, I wasn't a danger to anyone. Especially since I promised to stay in New Jersey."

"And he just took you at your word?" Danny demanded. 

"I can be very persuasive," Chambers said. 

"What do you want with me?" Danny asked.

Chambers looked at him as if he thought the answer should be obvious. "I want you to stay with me," he said, the dreamy tone of his voice making Danny shudder. "Forever."

"And it never occurred to you to simply ask?" Danny pressed, stalling for time from whatever Chambers had planned for him. 

"And give you the opportunity to say no?" Chambers asked. "No, Daniel, I've been disappointed by so many, before; I didn't want you to disappoint me, as well." The somber expression on his face disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and Chambers bounced to his feet. "I want to have some fun. Don't you want to have fun, Danny Boy?"

Danny knew better than to bait the dangerous sociopath. That was Steve's thing, not his. But he was hurt, and he was angry, and his partner's words just seemed to float out of his mouth. 

"Sorry to _disappoint_ ," he spit out, "but I actually have other plans." 

Chambers' eyes flared dangerously at his words, and he glared down at Danny. He was practically shaking with rage. 

"You're mine," he growled. "You're supposed to want to be with _me_. Forever!"

Danny defiantly shook his head. "Forever's already spoken for," he told the other man. 

He never saw the knife appear in Chambers' hand. But he certainly felt the blade as it sliced neatly through cloth, and the skin below, a line of blood welling up on his chest. Danny didn't even bother holding back a yell, praying there was someone, anyone, out there who could hear him. 

"You're mine," Chambers snarled, making another cut on Danny's chest, his eyes flashing with rage. "You're mine, you're mine-"

Danny closed his eyes and clung to the ropes binding him to the bed. His chest was awash in pain, and he'd lost any chance of reasoning with Chambers. 

And he was well and totally screwed.


End file.
